In recent years, electronic trading systems have gained wide spread acceptance for trading of a wide variety of items, such as goods, services, financial instruments, and commodities. For example, electronic trading systems have been created which facilitate the trading of financial instruments and commodities such as stocks, bonds, currency, futures contracts, oil, and gold.
Many of these electronic trading systems use a bid/offer process in which bids and offers are submitted to the systems by a passive side and then those bids and offers are hit or lifted (or taken) by an aggressive side. For example, a passive trading counterparty may submit a “bid” to buy a particular trading product. In response to such a bid, an aggressive side counterparty may submit a “hit” in order to indicate a willingness to sell the trading product to the first counterparty at the given price. Alternatively, a passive side counterparty may submit an “offer” to sell the particular trading product at the given price, and then the aggressive side counterparty may submit a “lift” (or “take”) in response to the offer to indicate a willingness to buy the trading product from the passive side counterparty at the given price.